The McDonald Papers, Part I, Chapter 4: The Danbury Expedition
His advice is said to have found favor with the public authorities, and to have been a chief cause of their subsequent successes. In the year 1795, this abled and intrepid man died at New York of the yellow fever and was buried in St. Paul's church-yard. Arnold's characteristics as a commander never appeared more striking than during the concluding operations of the expedition. Spurring from one corps to another, he ad-dressed the volunteers and militia men. Appealing in a few
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glowing words to their patriotism, he inspired them with his own intrepidity, and rendered them willing and even anxious to be led against a superior body of regular troops. Like Shakespeare's Mantagenet at Bosworth-Field his "soul was in arms." When ordinary solicitation failed, he condes-cended to entreaties, and sometimes reverted even to men- aces and assault. Lockwood, a militia captain, from Stam-ford, on being ordered at Compo, to join one of the columns of attack; answered that his men refused to move. Arnold replied by first pointing a pistol at him and then firing it over the heads of his company, after which the recusants readily took their appropriate places. Arnold, whose heart had been bent upon the discomfiture of the British army, was much chagrined at the result of his last attack. After the action was over he spoke of the Continental troops and most of the volunteers in laudatory terms, but said of the militia that he hoped never again to see them in the field. When, however, the first feelings of disappointment had subsided, he admitted the injustice of his censure. He well knew that the best trained soldiers the world has seen, have sometimes suffered defeat from panic, and that it must needs be unreasonable to expect from the peaceful husbandman, who for the first time faces the enemy, that steadiness which the veteran soldier cannot always command.